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Sunday, December 23, 2012

Song Slightly Out of Tune

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 1: 39-56
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 23, 2012

“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." (Luke 1:45 NRS).

Hope sings!   As poet Emily Dickerson once wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”   The music of hope is central to all our lives.  The music of hope can lift us beyond what we know and give us the promise of something more.   Music is a  gift of song which can make us want to believe in what might, can or will be. 

When you become a Christian in the European Church, at your baptism you are not only presented a Bible but you are also presented a song book. Your first Christian class as a newly baptized believer is often music lessons.  Music and the Word go together like hand and glove to bring faith, hope and love into our lives.   You just can’t imagine a Christian who doesn’t at least try to sing and make a joyful noise.  

And what would our lives be without the sound of music?  What would our faith be without the music of the soul?  What would Christmas be without the singing of carols and the music of hope?  Even for fun we must sing our way through this time of year: Jingle Bells.  Jingle Bells.  Jingle all the way.  Oh what fun to laugh and SING sleighing song tonight!  Here in the south we seldom sled at Christmas, but we always sing.

But Christmas music is much more musical jingles.  Christmas music must be sung with depth and meaning for Christmas to truly seem like Christmas.   These kinds of Christmas songs don’t rise and fall on the charts, but they are a different kind of music; the kind we sing over and over each year.  It’s not music that fits the times, but its music that makes the times and brings us the faith, hope and love of the season. 

We all have our favorite songs at Christmas.  For instance, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” is not a much beloved Christmas carol, because it sounds are minor and solemn.  “Silent Night” is much loved, but even it can drag on slowly.  “Joy to the World” sounds exciting and joyful.   “Angels We Have Heard On High” is wonderfully joyous, but it can be quite challenging with its chorus: “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”.  All these great Christmas songs are solid and enduring, but it might surprise you that one of the greatest Christmas songs must be sung slightly out of tune.

None of us like to hear music “out of tune”.   We will accept discord and dissonance from in the innocent voices of our children, but how could we love a Christmas song that is always sung out of tune.  But in a figurative way, that is exactly what we find in Mary’s song, which is our text for today.   Some have put her song to music, but it hasn’t become very popular.  It is too classical, too religious, too boring, or too sophisticated for popular consumption.  But of course, that it’s not at all ‘consumable” may be good thing.   What’s isn’t “consumed” can last, right?    This may be why Mary’s song has to be sung “out of tune” for our time, as much as it was Mary first sung it.

This ‘slightly’ out-of-tune” song has been called Mary’s Magnificat---taken from the first word for “magnify” as it begins in the Latin text.  Mary’s song is not the only Christmas tune in the Bible.  Luke’s gospel includes three others: The Exultation by Elizabeth, The Benedictus of Zechariah, and of course, the angels’ “Glory to God in the Highest!”  But before we get to the “glory in the highest” we have to hear and learn to sing this music of a God who is out of tune and out of step with how things are in the world. 

LET YOUR SOUL MAGNIFY THE LORD
The very first note ‘out of tune’ with our world was Mary’s own faith.  In a world of faithlessness, agnosticism, self-centeredness and cynicism, Mary was courageously faithful.  Against all that was wrong in the world, Mary did something right.  Even in a world that played to an entirely different melody, Mary marched to the beat of a different drum.  She lived the courageous, honorable, and radical life of faith in Israel’s God.

We are told in Luke’s text that out of all the women in Israel who could have been chosen to bear the baby who would be the Messiah, Mary was chosen because she was ‘the favored one’.   This does not mean that Mary was better than anyone else, nor does it mean that Mary was more important, but what it does mean is that Mary lived her life in the most normal, honorable, decent way that allowed God to use her for this very special miracle of grace.   What was it that God found so “favorable” with Mary?   Was it her youth, her virginity, her faithfulness to Israel’s law?   Perhaps this was part of it.   But what is most clearly revealed is found in very first line of her song when she starts: “Let my soul magnify the Lord!”   By this Mary means, Let my life and my soul put the focus straight on what God wants—not just on what I want. 

This wish to exalt and magnify the LORD is a wish still much out of tune with the world.  It has always been that way.   Most people march to the beat of their own music.  Most people live to amplify their own feelings and their own ideas.   But Mary’s song is different.  Mary’s song is about how her life can amplify, magnify, intensify or augment the sentiments and wishes of God for this world.  That is certainly not what most music amps pick up today, is it?  Most live to make their own music or to mimic world’s music, don’t they?   A life lived for the will of God gets very little attention, or is to be despised or belittled.  But despite the fact that in so many ways Mary was unremarkable in her life, she was exceptional in her faith.  There was ‘something about Mary’ which still makes her a woman out of tune with this world.  Strangely enough, it was this very peculiar quality of personal faith that made possible the birth of the Messiah.  It can be assumed that without the capacity for the Christ to be born in her heart, Jesus would never have been conceived in Mary’s womb.

When you think about it, Mary’s faith was counter-cultural, but it was not exceptional.  In fact, it is Mary’s very ordinary life and simple faith that allowed for God’s grace to intercept her world.  Jesus was born of Mary, because Christ was born in Mary.   As the Church has rightly said, Mary is right revered as the very first ‘disciple’ of Jesus.   We need more people with faith that is ‘out of tune’ and out of step with this world.   We need people who are exceptional, exactly because they are not the ‘new normal’ and not because they are the ‘old normal’ either, but we need people who will live out the ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’ life that is lived above and beyond the norms and noises of this world.  There is so much in this world that needs to be confronted, changed and challenged, but it won’t happen from the top-down, it must come from the bottom-up.   It must come from people like it did from that young 26 year-old girl who works at a Target store in Illinois, who wrote an email to petition and challenge the work practices of large retailers who want to work ordinary people on holidays for their own profits.  Now, that young girl named Jennifer Ann, has the potential to be a Mary.   By her sense of sense of rightness, justice and reason, she gave birth to the kind of business sense that needs to change in our greedy, selfish, ego-centric society.

Or also consider that young 15 year-old-Pakistani girl,  Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the neck by the Taliban because she was speaking out and advocating the right of every young girl to have an education.  People around the world are praying for her recovery, crying out for justice against her shooters, and many are calling for her to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.   Why are they doing that, because this young girl was so exceptional?  No, they are doing this because this girl was so right, so true, so sincere, and so courageous.  Like Mary, she was a young, helpless girl, willing to sacrifice herself for the truth. (http://www.voanews.com/content/un-designates-malala-day-in-honor-of-pakistani-school-girl/1543221.html). We need more women, more young girls, and more people in general, who will sing this way.  We need people who will show and share their faith in the things that are true, just and right.    Mary sang this song that was ‘slightly out of tune’ and so must we.

LET THE BABY MOVE INSIDE OF YOU
Another ‘note’ about Mary’s song brings us to ask: Why is Mary singing this way?   What motivates her faith, besides this miraculous angel who brings her God’s message?   Well, of course, it must be the baby.  When a baby is coming, your life will focus on a lot of different things.  When people have children, they often settle down, become more serious, or they sing loud and clear, “God, help me!”  Mary ought to be singing this kind of song, because she is a young woman, having a child out of wedlock.  

Mary’s song may be all of this, but it is still more.  Mary is singing about God doing a miracle through her, but it’s not just a miracle for her, but it’s a miraculous work God will do for the world.  Like most mothers to be, she sees her child as unique and special, which makes her feel especially blessed.   What mother doesn’t feel this way?  What parent doesn’t see their child as some kind of “savior” from all that is meaningless and mad about the world?   Can’t a child promise to bring us all a different and better focus in life?   Mary is right about this, but again, we must realize that it’s not just her coming chance at motherhood that makes her feel this way.  When the baby jumps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb something even more special than the conception of two talented children is what is being announced.   These children are going to be born for a very special purpose---to bring hope of God’s mercy, grace, and salvation into the world. 

Can you still get excited about this?  Can you still feel the baby move inside of you?  I’m not talking about having a physical child, but now I’m talking about letting the truth of God move in us.  Is there still any life?  Is there anything left that makes you see the need for God’s truth, righteousness and justice in this world?    Let me explain more of what I’m implying.   In this child that was to be born, God is going to make music that no human voice can make alone.   In this baby, God is going to fulfill his promise, not simply a promise to bring a child to Mary, but to bring the sounds of hope to Mary’s world.    Mary is singing slightly out of tune when she sings of her hope through this child, God “has shown the strength of his arm; He has scattered the thoughts of the proud in their hearts”    This a very strange and “out of tune” way to save the world, isn’t it?   How does God show his “strength” by getting “scattering the thoughts of the proud” “bringing down thrones”,  by  “lifting up the lowly” and by ‘filling the hungry with good things, while the rich go away empty”?   Does this sound like Christmas?  What kind of Christmas spirit is this?  

All of us know and love the Victorian play “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, with its stingy and sour Ebenezer Scrooge, its ghostly and ghastly Jacob Marley and it’s underpaid and overworked Bob Crachit.  Maybe the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” is more popular these days, but it is Charles Dickens’ story that rings much true with the world we know all too well.  What you may not know about is what inspired Dickens to write this story of hope for transformation and change.  Dickens himself grew up in some very humiliating conditions which are not directly described, but implied.   When Charles’ father was briefly imprisoned for improper business practices, this intellectually gifted young Charles Dickens had to leave school and go to work in the factory.  There he was became haunted for the rest of his life,  after witnessing firsthand the terrible working conditions of the most impoverished areas of London and saw the many social injustices the poor suffered at the expense of the wealthy and well-to-do.  Dickens was keenly touched by the lot of poor children in the middle 19th century England.    In May of 1843, he was about to publish a political pamphlet  entitled,  An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child" but instead, the pamphlet would become a narrative, with the title: A Christmas Carol, rather than a stuffy, polemical essay.  Dickens believed that this story of “good news” would be the best way to get his message across to the people who needed to have a Christmas conversion of their own to move away from their own greed and selfishness to become concerned, touched and burdened about the great social and spiritual need of his day.

What we can say about Dickens Carol, as well as, Mary’s song, is that they were both singing a song bigger than her own and very out of tune with how things were in the real world.   But is Mary’s song, really that much off based with how things are,  or should be today?   Mary sings that the changes that that need to happen, that should happen, or must happen, will only come when the “strong arm of the LORD scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts”.   Isn’t this still how the change must come?   The great needs for change, conversion and transformation, will never come fully and finally until people have a conversion of mind and heart.   Mary rightly sings that if change is going to come, God will have to bring it, and it must begin from within.  What Mary sings is out of tune with the Military options of our world.  Mary sings that the great change come not by the force of human powers, but by spiritual strength of the eternal and true God.   Peace does not come through our own human strength.  This is a message that is simply out of tune. Or is it?

LET GOD DO GREAT THINGS FOR YOU
The final thing that is much out of tune in Mary’s song is this hope that this baby, her baby will not only challenge the status quo of the world, but will also change that “same ole, same ole” world.  Mary sings that by sending this child, God will not only do “great things” for her (v. 49) but will offer “mercy for those who fear him from generation to generation” (v. 50) and God will “help his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy” (v.54).  She believes that it is the birth of this child, who will finally fulfill God’s long standing promise of saving Israel and bringing light, salvation, and hope to whole world.

To believe that such a promise has been, or is being fulfilled, still takes as much faith for us to sing and it did for Mary.   Our faith in Jesus is still a faith much out of tune with the ways of the world.  That has not changed.  I don’t believe it will ever change until God finally intervenes to put all the wrongs of this world to right.  We still wait on that change.  We still pray, “thy Kingdom come and thy will be done”.   Much like Mary, we still sing a song of hope that is slightly out of tune, don’t we?   Is there any used to sing it?  Is there is any reason to keep believing it?   

The great teacher of preachers, Fred Craddock tells about his most difficult “convert”.  He writes: “My mother took us to church and Sunday school; my father didn’t go. He complained about Sunday dinner being later when she came home. Sometimes the preacher would call, and my father would say, "I know what the church wants. Church doesn’t care about me.  Church wants another name, another pledge, another name, and another pledge.  Right? Isn’t that the name of the game?  Another name, another pledge." That’s what he always said.

Sometimes we’d have a revival.  The pastor would bring the evangelist and say to the evangelist, "There’s one now, sic him, get him, get him," and my father would say the same thing.  Every time, my mother in the kitchen, always nervous, in fear of flaring tempers, of somebody being hurt.  And always my father said, "The church doesn’t care about me. The church wants another name and another pledge." I guess I heard it a thousand times.

One time he didn’t say it. He was in the veteran’s hospital, and he was down to 73 pounds. They’d taken out his throat, and he said, "It’s too late."  They put in a metal tube, and X-rays burned him to pieces.  The son flew in to see him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat.  Around the room were potted plants and cut flowers on all the windowsills, a stack of cards twenty inches deep beside his bed.  And even that tray where they put food, if you can eat it, on that was a flower.  And all the flowers beside the bed, every card, every blossom, were from persons or groups from the church.
The Father watched his son Fred read a card.  The Father could not speak, so he took a Kleenex box and wrote on the side of it a line from Shakespeare.  If he had not written this line, I would not tell you this story. He wrote: "In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story."
I said, "What is your story, Daddy?"  And he wrote, "I was wrong." (Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard F. Ward, eds., Chalice Press, 2001, p. 14.). 

Who will finally be proven wrong?  I guess for now, the truth remains to be seen—not only in the world, but in us.  Whether or not Jesus is real today depends on how we want to see things.  Do we look at the world only from our own limited perspective, or do we see it as God sees it?   It’s almost funny isn’t it, and also sad, that the closer we get to God the more Jesus makes sense.  Only as we “ponder it in our hearts” like Mary did can we find and know the truth. 

Whether Jesus’ birth makes a difference in the big, bad world “out there” Mary can’t yet know and neither can we.  But what Mary does know and can know, and what always makes Christmas real, is that Jesus is making a difference in her life.  This child is not just her child, but this is God’s child.  It starts with the same miracle every mother  knows, but it doesn't stop there.  This one poor baby, born of a peasant woman, born far away from the world’s powers, should never have been noticed at all.  His story ought not to have been told because nothing about him should have ever mattered.   It shouldn’t have mattered, unless, that is, the story is true. We are still telling Jesus’ story today because a helpless child came into this hopeless world and is still the only true hope of the earth.  This is a song of faith that remains very much out of tune with our world, but its strange sound is more hopeful than any other music I know.  Amen.         

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